Eximus

So it's the last night my family's going to be spending in Hawai'i. I'm not really sure how to feel; on one hand, I really love it here and I've missed living here, but on the other I really miss having a bed to myself that isn't on the floor, and on a foot we're going to have a(nother) funeral for my grandpa before we get home for which I'm going to sing.

Grief is a strange thing for me. It's always kind of dull and distant, because I've grown up in a military family and had to lose touch with everyone I knew every year for a long time. Between that, the fact that I'm largely lacking in most kinds of time sense, and my faith, I actually don't see the difference between temporary separations or permanent ones. Or maybe I just don't believe in permanent separations at all anymore. There's little sense in the back of my head that firmly believes, and cannot be convinced otherwise, that sooner or later I will come back to Hawai'i, and that someday I will see Grandma Jan and Grandpa Bob again and ask them the questions that I never knew to ask until after they died, and that someday I will get to meet my natural grandmother on my dad's side and see if I really do look that much like she did.

And, yet, I cry over war memorials, now that I begin to understand how much pain and horror they represent. I visited the USS Arizona today. She must have been beautiful, just like her sister ship the Missouri still is, and unlike the last time I visited both--when I was much younger--I understand now what kind of destruction took place at Pearl Harbor in World War II. The Arizona is still commissioned, I found out yesterday, even though she has been sunken and a tomb for her crew for seventy years. The flag over the memorial is attached to the remains of her mast. It flies at half-staff to honor the dead, the same as at Arlington and Punchbowl cemeteries.

After seeing so much this week, I feel like I should do something about it. Something to honor the sailors who died at Pearl Harbor, and the survivors like my great-granddaddy. Something to show respect for the Hawaiian culture that I know too little about and have so much interest in. For the former, I know what I can do. I can tell my family's stories, and sing in honor of those people.

For the latter, all I can do for the time being is shut up and listen. But maybe, if I listen hard enough, perhaps I could learn to speak Hawaiian properly.

Maybe if I listen hard enough, I could begin to deserve to learn.